State Rooms

The main exhibition of the castle’s interiors includes several rooms on the ground floor and guest apartments on the second floor. The three rooms on the ground floor, which served as the suite of the Governors of Cracow, have retained their Renaissance wooden ceilings. Their stone portals were reconstructed in the inter-war period. The Envoys’ Stairway which connects the ground level with the private royal apartments on the first floor and the rooms on the second floor boasts original Renaissance portals.

The second floor of the eastern and northern wings houses guest apartments. Their original ceilings were damaged by fire in 1702 and again during the Austrian occupation in the early 19th century. Large fragments of original wall friezes are preserved in the three rooms located to the south of the Envoys’ Stairs (missing fragments were reconstructed before the Second World War). The Envoys’ Room boasts an astonishing ceiling with woodcarvings of 30 human heads. Tapestries commissioned by Sigismund Augustus are the most valuable treasure of the Renaissance rooms, and the only art object preserved from the original interior decoration. Woven in Brussels in the third quarter of the 16th century, they depict biblical and grotesque scenes, and the coats of arms of Poland and Lithuania. There are also valuable paintings, Italian furniture, predominantly from 16th century Tuscany, and Polish royal portraits.